Unnatural links are backlinks that violate Google spam policies and lead to link spam. These are low-quality or artificial backlinks created using black hat SEO techniques.
Any website that has unnatural links might lead to a Google penalty. Therefore, it is necessary to identify bad links to keep your website’s organic rankings and traffic safe.
What Are Unnatural Links?
Unnatural links are artificial backlinks manually created to increase a website's organic rankings and link equity. They can be paid, exchanged, or created using free-for-all (FFA) sites. Some artificial backlinks are also built using private blog networks (PBNs).
Here is the complete list of unnatural links:
- Paid links: Links purchased for SEO purposes without the nofollow attribute.
- Reciprocal Links: Excessive link exchanges between sites solely to boost rankings. You can still run link exchange campaigns without being spammy.
- Low-quality directory links: Inbound links from web directories and social bookmarking sites that have no moderation and have high spam scores.
- Private blog network (PBN) links: Backlinks from websites that link to each other to artificially grow their organic reputation.
- Footer links: External links placed in the footer of websites, especially when irrelevant. Please note that not all further links are unnatural. Read our guide on footer linking best practices.
- Comment links in Blog posts: Links in blog comments or forum posts that add no value.
- Hidden links: Links hidden via CSS and placed in areas so that they remain invisible to users.
- Sitewide links: Hyperlinks placed in the sidebar or footer that lead to a significant increase of too many inbound links from a single domain.
- Press release links: Overused links in press releases with keyword-rich anchor text.
- Widget or plugin links: Links embedded in widgets, tools, or plugins provided to other sites.
Why Are Unnatural Links Harmful?
Unnatural links are harmful for the following reasons:
Negative Impact on SEO and Search Engine Rankings
Unnatural links go against search engine guidelines, which prioritize organic and high-quality links as a key ranking factor.
When a website accumulates unnatural links, algorithms like Google Penguin and SpamBrain efficiently recognize the manipulative intent and devalue the site. The AI-powered spam prevention system detects individual links spam, scams, and online harassment.
Chance of Google Penalties
Google spam policy-violating content and behaviors are monitored via automated algorithms.
Human reviews are also a part of unnatural links warning. Google can impose two types of penalties for unnatural link building practices:
- Manual actions: If Google’s webspam team identifies unnatural links during a manual review, they can apply a manual action penalty. This means the website’s ranking will be reduced, or specific pages can be delisted until the issue is resolved. Here is an example of a manual action penalty by Google received in the Search Console:
- Algorithmic downgrades: Google ranking algorithms automatically detect and devalue websites with manipulative link profiles. These downgrades can happen without direct communication from Google, making it harder to identify the cause of the ranking drop.
How to Identify Unnatural Links?
Backlink checking and site auditing tools, such as SEMrush, Ahrefs, SErankings, and others, can help you identify unnatural links.
I will take the example of SErankings for identifying unnatural backlinks. Log in to the tool and visit Dashboard > Backlinks > Backlink Checker.
Now, enter your domain to get a full list of links.
After the analysis is complete, you will receive an overview of your website’s backlink profile with the following data:
- Total number of backlinks
- Total number of referring domains
- Toxic backlinks
- Anchor texts
- Domain Trust Score
- Referring IPs
Once you get this data, head over to the Toxic Backlinks section.
Toxic backlinks are unnatural, suspicious, or low-quality links. They are categorized into four types based on priority:
- High toxicity: Highly harmful links that pose significant risks to your site’s SEO.
- Medium toxicity: Moderately harmful links that may require attention and potential removal.
- Low toxicity: Low-risk links that are unlikely to affect rankings but could be monitored.
- Non-toxic: Safe links that contribute positively to your domain rating.
Cross-check each of the toxic links (those with toxicity scores above 60) and prepare a list of the ones that seem spammy.
You should look for unnatural links that you or a team have created in the past. All toxic links are not unnatural, and there are some links that you have no control over, which are created naturally over time. You can safely ignore such links, and Google is smart enough to devalue such toxic links from hampering your domain’s reputation.
John Mueller, Google Search Advocate, has said that Google’s system will automatically detect and ignore such links.
Next, click on Referring Domains to find a complete list of domains linking to your website.
Look for too many links from single referring domains. For instance, if your site has 100s of backlinks from one domain using the same anchor text, it is a red signal for Google that something is not right.
Next, analyze the anchor text distribution by assessing the diversity of anchor texts.
As a best practice, natural links should come from unique referring domains and should have unique anchor texts. The anchor can be a variation of your primary keyword. There should not be too many exact-match anchor text links because those may get flagged as unnatural links by Google.
To summarize, here are the top things to check in a link audit to identify unnatural links:
- Anchor Text: Search for keyword rich anchors that look manipulative and unnatural.
- Paid or Sponsored Links: Identify sponsored links without the rel=sponsored or the rel=nofollow tags.
- Relevance of Content: Ensure the webpage content is contextually relevant to your industry.
- Link Placement: Review unnatural link placements, such as hidden links or those stuffed in footers and sidebars.
- Sudden Spike in Backlinks: Investigate any unusual or rapid increase in backlinks, as this could signal a low-quality link building scheme.
- Private Blog Network (PBN) Links: Be cautious of backlinks from link farms, which are created solely for manipulating rankings.
- Site-wide Links: Check for excessive site-wide links that appear on every page of a linking site.
How To Avoid A Link Penalty If Your Website Has Unnatural Links?
Follow the below steps to keep your website safe from algorithmic penalties via link schemes:
Prepare a List of Low-Quality Links
Download all backlinks from spammy, low-quality, or irrelevant domains. Double-check the domains for link quality and filter domains that lack content quality or engage in domain abuse.
Filter PBNs and sites selling do-follow sponsored posts.
Also, look at links from low-quality web directories, forums, and article directories. You should also look for domains selling paid links and filter them.
At the end of this task, you should have a list of referring domains that you don’t want.
Remove All The Shortlisted Links
If you or your team has created those links, ask them to remove them. If these unnatural backlinks are pointing to your domain without your knowledge, ask the website owners to remove them.
Reach out to the website owners hosting the unnatural links and request they remove them. Be brief and explain exactly what you want to be done. Most website owners don’t like to read longer emails, so keep it short and to the point. Be specific about the URL and the exact links you want removed.
This task will take one or two weeks, depending on the number of backlinks on your domain.
Track all irrelevant links that are removed and prepare a final list of domains that remain.
Disavow Unremovable Links
If certain risky links cannot be removed, use Google’s Disavow Tool to ignore those links. Submit a list of harmful links via the Disavow Tool in Google Search Console.
For more detailed steps, refer to this source.
While disavowing a link doesn’t guarantee its removal from Google’s index, it signals that you don’t want it associated with your website or affecting its rankings.
Submit a Reconsideration Request (if Penalized)
If your website has received a manual action (seen in Search Console), you should submit a reconsideration request.
Explain the steps you took to fix the artificial links issue and provide evidence of link removal or disavowal. Here are some things to include:
- Introduction: Identify the issues that led to your site’s penalty and summarize the steps you’ve taken to address them.
- Specific Steps Taken: Provide a link to a Google Doc listing all links to your site, including the unnatural or spammy ones that have been removed. Include screenshots of emails sent to request link removals.
- Examples of Removed Toxic Links: Mention specific toxic links and explain why they were removed, such as poor content or a spammy link profile.
- Apology: Thank Google for their time, express your apologies for the inconvenience, and assure them you will monitor your link profile more closely and adhere to their link quality guidelines.
Remember to save a draft for your records, as you won’t be able to review it after submission.
Also, do not submit additional reconsideration requests until you have received a response from Google.
Best Examples of Unnatural Links Penalty
There are several major brands that manual Google penalties have hit in the past for selling links on their website. Among the top ones are Forbes, JCPenney, and Overstock.
Forbes
In 2011, Forbes was caught selling outbound links on its website. Google applied a massive penalty, leading to a huge drop in organic traffic.
JCPenney
In 2010, the American department store chain JCPenney was caught building unnatural links to their domain to manipulate their search rankings.
The Backlink audit revealed that irrelevant domains linked to product category pages using exact match anchors.
Overstock
Overstock offered students and faculty a 10% discount in exchange for college and university websites embedding links to Overstock product pages for specific keywords such as "bunk beds" and "gift baskets."
The links were completely unnatural because people started linking to Overstock pages using irrelevant text and exact match anchors.
Google soon detected this unnatural linking practice, and its rankings received a major hit.
Frequently Asked Questions
How to differentiate between natural and unnatural Links?
The best way to differentiate between natural and unnatural links is that natural links are earned (you don’t create them), while unnatural links are manually created. For example, if any website adds on an inbound link pointing to a stats-based post on your domain, you naturally acquire an editorial backlink. On the contrary, if your black hat SEO team creates 1000 backlinks in 1 week from low-quality web directories, forums, article submission sites, or other similar sites, these are counted as unnatural links.
What is the Google LinkSpam update for detecting unnatural links?
Google released the LinkSpam update in December 2022 to prevent link abuse and neutralize the impact of suspicious or low-quality links in organic search results. The LinkSpam detection algorithm identified spam links obtained primarily for artificially manipulating organic search rankings. The system neutralized any credits passed by these links.
Can I recover from a penalty caused by unnatural links?
Recovering from a manual penalty is difficult. You need to remove all crap links and submit a disavow file to allow Google to devalue the links causing the issue. Once everything is done, you must submit a reconsideration request to allow the Google webspam team to investigate the issue. This process can take from weeks to months. When your review is complete, you will receive an email or a message in the Search Console. However, this wait is often longer than Google suggests. Hence, it is best to keep your website link profile natural. You should also continue acquiring authority links during the review period to further boost your domain rating.
How can I create natural links?
You can acquire natural backlinks by creating high-quality content. When you publish original, credible, and unique content on your site, people organically link back to it, leading to the natural acquisition of editorial backlinks over time. You can also build links using high-quality guest posts from relevant domains and using natural anchor text. You can use our anchor text suggestion tool for long-tail and branded anchor text ideas. Remember, these links should be contextual and not from the author's bio. Link inserts on high-authority websites are also an excellent way to boost the credibility of your website via natural backlinks.
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